An Ode To Reading
Friends!
Writing newsletters is, like all human endeavors, a learning experience. For the more astute readers out there, you may have noticed last week’s double ending. That was NOT on purpose. Simply a mistake. Sorry. I am still learning how these platforms work. And exactly like in life...some days are better than others!
Hopefully, that didn't stop you from reflecting a bit on this season of new beginnings, including which behaviors, attitudes, and habits we'd like to bring with us on our journey ahead (and what we’d actually rather retire forever.) The pandemic, as hard as it has been and, in many aspects, continues to be, offers us a unique opportunity to reimagine, rethink, and restart. After all, the Renaissance was born in the aftermath of the Black Plague. For the golfers out there, we have been given a mulligan. Let's take full advantage of it. If there ever was a time to make lemonade out of lemons, this is it!
This week, I wanted to reflect on the greatest gift to humanity: the written word and the transfer of knowledge.
If you boil down human evolution to its simplest form you can say that we have had a few key evolutionary shifts (I know this is an incredible simplification but bear with me....)
First, and most obviously, human beings were born. Let's not go into when and why just now, although I am tempted to riff on that some other time. As they say, the two most important dates in our lives are the day we were born and the day we figure out why.
Second, we developed language. This enabled humans to communicate with each other, which, in turn, enabled the sharing of experiences, lessons learned, and thereby fueled Darwinian evolution and progress.
Third, we wielded a paintbrush and created the written word. From prehistoric cave drawings to Sumerian tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphs, for thousands and thousands of years, we have yearned to communicate our stories through symbolic representation.
Fourth, the Gutenberg press. The world changed immediately with the newfound ability to print, and thereby replicate, disseminate, and share our knowledge more broadly. Of course, the Bible was the first book to be printed. Prior to the press, European monks had to write by hand whatever religious or scientific lessons and information needed to be disseminated. Thereby, since reading materials were scarce, so were readers themselves. And given the handwritten nature of this technology, the quantity and cost of this knowledge became distinctly privileged, limited to a selected few within the upper echelons of feudal society. So, one could argue that the Gutenberg press and the technologies that followed democratized education in one fell swoop – one of the greatest contributions to human progress in the 2nd millennium. We have never been the same since!
Fifth, I would be remiss if I didn't add the Internet to this evolution. Simply because, like the Gutenberg press, it has enabled a level of connectivity and mass dissemination of knowledge that even printed materials could never achieve. I guess you could think of it as the full democratization of knowledge. It's a beautiful thing.
I guess the headline here is that communication matters. A lot. It has shaped who we are on a fundamental level. It's not the only thing that matters, of course. There are plenty of other radical drivers of human progress. Science and the evolution of medical technologies, energy systems, the establishment of free markets, and its global institutions are some examples of other massively important contributors to global civilizations ....but....it all starts with effective, accurate, affordable, and shareable communication.
With the internet, we have the world at our fingertips. With a few keystrokes, (nearly) every human on the planet gains access to the world's collective knowledge instantly and without cost. This is also the source of my optimism for the future. I will always do my best to lead with optimism. I have written about it before and will return again and again since I believe we have to better tolerate the dialectic dance between our problems and our opportunities, and unfortunately, most media is stuck on the former. I am trying to do my part on the latter.
I know it is easy. Believe me, I fall into this trap daily, to be consumed by all the problems around us. And there are, of course, plenty of them. But, as I have written before, our media and social media apparatus is steeped, incentivized, and completely enthralled with a negative bias. It's unfortunately what sells the best. My attempt with this newsletter is to "elevate" ourselves above and beyond both the problems and the opportunities and see the world with a bit more distance and perhaps more nuance.
I think we don't recognize the power of knowledge enough. For most of humanity, actually, almost until NOW, the vast majority of knowledge was only available to the Kings, the Priests, and the wealthy. To a very small fraction of humanity. Some argue that was by design. Others argue it was by necessity, constrained by the cost of distribution. To me, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the cat is out of the bag. The knowledge train has left the station. Knowledge is, by all intents and purposes, freely available. And if you believe that people are mostly good (which I do), and you believe that knowledge has power (which I also do), more good will come out of the next phase of human evolution than ever before in our history. It's so exciting.
But, this freedom comes at a price. We have to be mindful of WHAT we read. If we feed our minds with limiting beliefs, we will limit our beliefs. So, the responsibility is on us. We need to be effective curators of what goes into our minds. And books are a fantastic mechanism for curation. Make sure you are surrounded by a diverse set of thoughts across genres. Read books recommended by people you don't agree with. Read biographies covering eras, countries, and cultures you don't know. It's a fantastic way to travel. And it is almost free.
I am sure many of you, like me, struggle to find the time to read enough. It's a constant battle. And social media and technology haven't really helped, with more articles, posts, and sheer content available than ever. It is competing with books. In not entirely bad ways, of course. But still.
Sometime in my early 30s, my good friend, Richard Levi, introduced me to the work of Mortimer Adler. I had no idea who Mortimer Adler was. And it is somewhat serendipitous that I later moved to Chicago, where he spent significant time as a professor at the University of Chicago. He has published many books, but the book that I read and that forever changed my relationship with books in general and reading, in particular, was his classic: How to Read a Book.
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
— FRANCIS BACON
At that point, I didn't typically read many books. But reading this book changed my relationship with reading, and hence the value I derived from the world of books. In my particular case, I read way too much non-fiction. I tend to be most interested in "how to" do things vs biographies and fiction. But I am working on it. I am clearly out of balance here.
But Adler's book helped me realize there are many different ways to read a book. Not all reading is created equal. I also learned how to read much faster with a heightened sense of intentionality. Always a good thing.
As a bonus, the book itself ends with Mortimer Adler's list of Great Books. His 500 books coupled with some other versions of similar lists have also contributed to the establishment of the Great Books Program, a foundational university education offered at many universities such as Chicago, Notre Dame, and Columbia (and about 97 others).
So. Here is the thing. Let's not take books for granted. Like with anything else, let's be more mindful and intentional about what we read and what we watch, and who we spend our lives with.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ”
— ANNIE DILLARD
Some more inspiration...if you want it....
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass
“There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy
“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen
“Reading… a vacation for the mind… ” – Dave Barry
“Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.” – Alberto Manguel
“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.” – Jeanette Winterson
I will end with two of my favorite curators of reading out there. I love and admire both of them very much. If you haven’t subscribed to their emails, I very much encourage you to sign up:
Maria Popova's wonderful BrainPickings newsletter where she weekly goes deep on primarily "older" literature. Her incredible curation is inspiring, timeless, and important. Please sign up and also, if you can, please make a small donation when you do so, as the newsletter is free and this is her life!
Ryan Holliday's site and newsletter. He sends a newsletter out with what he has read lately. I also very much loved his books, particularly Ego is the enemy and Obstacle is the way.
Here is Mortimer Adler's Great Books list (there are other versions expanding on this list)
I will leave it there for now. Enough to dig in there for a month...or a lifetime!
Keep reading. It will make us all better and therefore the world better!
